CSS Winner is a web design gallery where sites are selected and rated on several criteria. The Site of the Day title is awarded to a single project for one day, and alongside it the jury's scores are published: for design, functionality, usability and content. Pivovarov's site received 7.6 for design, 7.7 for functionality, 7.6 for usability and 7.5 for content, with an overall score of 7.6. The project card lists the studio's authorship:
By Sponge D&D Ukraine
That is the name of the Odesa-based studio Sponge D&D, founded by Bohdan Hnatiuk. The CSS Winner win was not the agency's first: the studio's profile on the platform includes 21 nominations, 6 stars and 9 Site of the Day awards, and the history of these wins began long before 2017.
A week of recognition
Two days after CSS Winner, on 24 August, the site received Special Kudos at CSS Design Awards with a score of 7.63. CSS Design Awards is an international web design competition where Special Kudos is given to works singled out by the jury outside the main nomination grid. Another day later, on 25 August, the site appeared on Awwwards, one of the world's best-known web design platforms. There the project became Site of the Day and received the Developer Award, which is given for technical implementation, not just the visual side.
The press wrote of five awards in a week, but the list of wins confirmed by dates and platforms names four: CSS Winner, CSS Design Awards, Awwwards Site of the Day and Awwwards Developer Award. These four accolades make up the week of 23–25 August.
The week itself came at a time when the studio had already established a practice of regularly entering such competitions. In 2017 the agency had received honours earlier too: BizzGrid became Site of the Day on CSS Winner on 17 January, M1 Club Hotel received two awards at once on 4 February, and Arbeko on 1 May entered the CSS Winner stars.
The path to international platforms
The studio's first notable results on foreign platforms date back to 2015. On 24 May the agency's website received Website of the Day at CSS Design Awards with a score of 7.80. Then followed CSS Nectar Site of the Day on 29 May, CSS Light Find of the Day on 3 June and Site of the Day on CSS Winner on 13 June with a score of 7.5. In the summer of that same year the site was recognised on BestCSS, CSSReel and Awwwards, where on 8 August it received Site of the Day with a score of 7.03.
Within Ukraine the agency's work also earned recognition. In 2015 the Sponge D&D site made it into the Best of B-1 at the Ukrainian competition, and on 22 October that year at the Golden Site 2015 awards it took first place in the Digital Agency Website category. Awards of this kind select the best sites by nomination, and a win in the agency category confirmed that the studio was not working only for foreign audiences.
What came next
Pivovarov was one of the last awards the studio collected in 2017, but not the only one. In the Runet creativity ranking the agency took 4th place in 2017 with 23.32 points. However, the following year its position dropped: in 2018 the studio found itself in 10th place with 12.25 points.
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